Indus Net start-up lab

"The biggest challenge a B2B tech start-up faces in Calcutta is proper time-bound mentoring, guidance and expertise. besides technology support, customer access and marketing or sales engine. This is our attempt to solve the problem, few start-ups at a time," Abhishek Rungta, CEO of Indus Net Technologies, said.

Indus Net Labs, which is a 1,000-square-feet incubation lab at Salt Lake Electronics Complex, will focus on digital technology start-ups with a preference for those that will cater to marketing, financial services, retail and business critical solutions. The three-month accelerator programme will also provide industry connections and guidance in investor networking. The programme will be offered free of cost.

"We want to produce at least 3-4 successful start-ups each year from this programme," Rungta said.

He added that the screening procedure would be designed meticulously. After the completion of the programme, the deserving start-ups will be asked to continue with the company to progress further by using Indus Net Technologies' internal resources such as development, sales & marketing team, clients and network partners.

The lab is already incubating some product development start-ups such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) called Breeze, a cloud-based tax filing company called MakeYourTax and an online collaboration software called Collusion.

"The focus of Indus Net Labs is to promote promising start-ups from the technological domain and creating the right ecosystem for their growth and development. The lab will provide domain-specific programmes to the participants to hone their skills to take ahead their ventures in the right direction," Bharat Berlia, chief information officer of Indus Net Technologies, said.